Catholic Church is a precious thing," he
said. "I do not want to disrupt it."
As I was leaving this exalted community,
two visiting Burgundian priests brought me
back to earth. Like most visitors they had
been served a lunch of ham, lentils, and cold
water outdoors, cafeteria style.
"There's no wine," one of them said
disconsolately.
"That's where they're making their big
A world made new in the justice of love:
That vision brought Prior Roger Schutz
(above) and Roman Catholic and Prot
estant brothers to the community at
Taize. Thousands-youths especially
flock yearly to the Church of the Reconcil
iation to share and spread an ancient mes
sage: the brotherhood of man under God.
The more militant St. Bernard used the
basilica at Vezelay (facing page) to foment
the Second Crusade in 1146.
mistake," his fellow priest quickly replied.
Wine is Burgundy's auxiliary religion.
Crosses mark some vineyard boundaries in
the wine-producing areas: the Cote de Nuits
and C6te de Beaune (which together com
prise the C6te d'Or), Chablis, C6te Chalon
naise, Maconnais, and Beaujolais, a vast,
sunny vineyard of southern Burgundy that
last year produced 137,000,000 bottles of the
most popular red wine in France.
The nearly 46,000 Burgundian wine
growers regard their profession as a sacred
trust. Their business documents often man
age to invoke "the grace of God and the pa
tronage of the Blessed Virgin."
Priests,
blessing the annual vendange, the gathering
of the grapes, invariably mention the first of
Christ's miracles, when He turned water
into wine at the wedding feast in Cana.
What a Difference a Day Makes
I tried my hand at the vendange one
bright September morning at the Samotel in
the middle of the C6te de Beaune. This great
moment of the wine harvest is dictated, one
of my fellow grape pickers told me, by "le
bon Dieu: the good Lord." Only He knows
when it will take place.
Generally it is 100 days after the blossoms
appear on the vines, announcing the forma
tion of the tiny Pinot Noir grapes beneath.
But choosing the exact moment of full matu
rity, maximum sugar content, can be a dicey
decision. One more day of sunshine may
produce a great, as opposed to a mediocre,
year, and one day of hard autumnal rain or
hail can ruin a whole year's production.
Under the hot sun I worked and sweated
side by side with a group of robust, red-faced
Burgundians. I stripped a few thousand
grapes from the vines and tossed them into
the big harvest baskets. By the end of the
morning I thought my back would break.
After the grueling work of picking was
over, I looked forward to trampling the
grapes with my bare feet. But I found that
the maceration of the grapes was done by a
machine called un fouloir-egrappoir.First,
it crushed the grapes, liberating the juice;
then it ejected the stalks after separating
them from the skins and the liquid.
Jacques Chevignard, chamberlain of the
famed wine-tasting society La Confrerie des
Chevaliers du Tastevin, explained, "The
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